For Some Reason
by Ahsurika
Summary: The bounty for a single Jedi has topped a jaw-dropping 1.6 million credits, more than half that for a young one. Easiest business opportunity Hondo's ever had.
1. Chapter 1

_I know her._

It's not the familiarity that surprises Hondo. Not exactly. He learned long ago that the galaxy isn't quite so big as it thinks it is. No, it's that for some reason he can't pull his eyes away, and in his experience this instinct of his always leads to trouble or payout. Predator or prey. An opportunity to conduct business or to avoid becoming someone else's.

And he trusts his sixth sense. Hasn't led him astray since, what? The Rishi debacle? And that wasn't _close_ to his fault. Not even forty percent. Definitely less than fifty.

The girl's bony, short, gaunt. Coral-brown skin stretched taut over sharp corners. Hair so blue that it's almost black, tangled in tight curls and shorn ragged above the nape of her neck.

He watches as she trudges through the crowded alley. Unlikely to be a previous business partner given that she looks to be a teenager. At least a decade younger than anyone he'd even consider sharing a bed or a cargo bay or an after-hours sabacc table with. Okay, not ten. Seven or eight years younger. And skinny.

Payout, then.

But kids usually aren't worth the bother. Bounties on kids are...there's no official rule against it, but truly it separates the businessmen from the scum, in his opinion. Profitable exceptions aside.

Then she lifts her head and stares right at him, and in her own recognition it suddenly clicks.

He remembers her big blue eyes being light and liquid, not two degrees below freezing. He remembers a Tholothian headdress. But it's the same girl, no doubt about it, even six years after Florrum. ( _Stars_ does he miss that base. Ord Mantell is a joke by comparison, though a paradise compared to the Hutt stench he's walking through now.) Even without hearing her earnest, filled-sinus voice, he knows it's her. And -

Oh.

 _Ah. Right_.

Every ounce of self-control he possesses clamps down on his expression. Wouldn't do to scare her off. Not when her stance is that of a gizka about to bolt.

He's impressed that she's made it this long. More impressed that she seems to have made the leap from Jedi brat and beacon of innocence to someone who can walk ten feet without being accosted. Hondo Ohnaka is no amateur hunter, but even he had been about to walk right past her without another look.

One point six alive, nine hundred dead, or any non-credit equivalent at market price. Empire must have a way to detect their "Force", or something, because _no_ bureaucracy has records good enough to allow for bounties like that. Seven hundred dropped from both for children, presumably because the adults have training to make acquisition...difficult. Even though he personally knows Jedi children can fight. Not all that well, but, if he's to be fair, neither could most of the grown ones, or they'd still be here.

 _To have made it this far...alas, poor Jedi._

The Jedi are gone, the survivors hunted. The Tholothian girl wouldn't be wandering the swampy surface of Nal Hutta if she had any other choice. Out of place, out of help, out of food. Not a good time to be a child in this part of the galaxy, either; many of the more _sordid_ underworld types don't worry whether the young soon-to-be corpse they stalk is a Jedi or not. The possibility of walking away with two hundred thousand credits, even weighed against the strict penalties of such a scam, is simply too enticing.

But Hondo is not those beings. He does not kill _children_.

He turns from her and leaves without a backward glance.

* * *

 **A/N: guess I'm committed to writing this now**


	2. Chapter 2

Katooni's first knock on the ship's curved exterior is timid.

 _This is a horrible idea. He's going to turn me in without a second thought._

Her stomach growls its turbulent rebuttal. " _Shut up_ ," she rasps, but hunger's conviction is tireless, and she hasn't eaten in five days. She raises her hand again and wobbles, swaying off balance from the motion. Too fast, too careless. Gentle movements.

But that _had_ been gentle.

She's not going to make it at this rate.

Another knock, forceful enough to bruise her knuckles. Not that that's hard to do when your body is slowly breaking down from lack of food and sleep and medicine. Still not loud enough, though.

Especially on a _durasteel hull_. At night. In an empty lot. Is this even the door?

She lifts her fist again -

"You should not be here, my dear."

Behind her.

In the dark, in her mental fog, Katooni can't see anything different about him. Speed-pilot's cap with goggles, fancy boots, his striking red cloak. The nod and wink he gave her as he boarded his ship in the Venator's hangar could've been last week instead of six years and another life ago.

She looks up into the shrewd eyes shaded behind his huge, ridiculous goggles. "I have nowhere else to go."

He stares at her. She wonders what calculations are running behind his silence. Probably how much he can make off her. But she has to hope.

Because it's the truth. Growing up cloistered in the Jedi Temple didn't allow her to make friends outside its halls, let alone establish trustworthy contacts across the galaxy. That was supposed to come later, when she was older and someone's Padawan.

She's met nobody kind enough to take her in who's also nomadic enough to keep her secret without putting themselves into danger. There's only one, met by the will of the Force, if that's the right way to describe a Weequay pirate captain with an indecipherable conscience trying to kidnap her and her friends.

If not him, then no one, and she's lost.

He's still watching her. Eying her.

Then he sighs, and Katooni's heart leaps.

"You should be _here_ , if nothing else," and he points to a section of the curved hull about four feet to her left. She doesn't understand until he presses a hand to it and the hull retracts, a ramp extending to the ground in welcome. A ramp he ascends before turning back toward her, his face shrouded in shadow. "Coming?"

Three steps into the ship, relief and exhaustion take her.

* * *

 **A/N: chapters will generally range from 450 to a 1k words. This'll be a short story - while I could expand the plot and scenes and turn it into a novella with attendant detail, I have too many other projects on the plate on top of a heavy workload :(**


	3. Chapter 3

He watches in silence as she tears into her food with the ferocity of a baby acklay. No, a whole nest of baby acklay. Amazing she can keep it down, if she was _this_ hungry. Though there's still night yet. She's _definitely_ not coming within ten yards of his weakest liquor. Maybe she should be sleeping in the fresher.

Given how pronounced her bony wrists, the too-defined contours of her collarbones, the way rags hang loosely on a torso that should be…she's, what, fourteen now? Thirteen? Small for a near-human species of that age, he'd think, compared to when he last saw her. And he could've sworn Tholothians hit puberty before twenty-five. Hunger's hit her hard.

But who knows? His memory isn't what it used to be. Intentionally so, regarding past positive Jedi associations. Underworld is always on the lookout for sympathizers to bait Jedi, and the nature of _bait_ …

Hmm. This is taking a while.

"What's your plan?" he asks. Not a terribly fair question, but then he doesn't care much about being fair. The second he took her in he entered the game, and fair loses.

Sure enough, suspicion strikes her glare, prey smelling danger. _Good instincts. Not good enough, but good. No wonder she's made it this far when so many others haven't._

"You know I don't trust you."

"Of _course_ you don't." Sure she doesn't. She took his food without hesitation, she's in his ship, she has no weapon other than her Force and she's weaker than weak. Words mean as much as the actions accompanying them. Too well he knows. "But I will say, if I wanted to hand you over to the Empire, I wouldn't bother with the niceties."

She seems to turn that over in her mind before devouring another half-plate. At the rate the girl's demolishing his food stores, no bounty could turn him a profit. Hondo clears his throat. "I cannot say the same for anyone who saw you enter this ship." She steadfastly ignores him, reaching for a meiloorun and _obliterating_ it in seconds. What was her name again? Katury? Kortana? "Or for my men."

Blue eyes flick to him over an empty bowl. "Thought they'd follow your lead after —" Her words are cut off as she spins away to heave half of her meal back up.

Hondo stares. Guess he was right.

Won't make the floor any easier to clean.

Kenatai? looks so dizzy she shouldn't be able to sit straight, but with gusto she returns to devouring the flaming _table_. Doesn't even miss a beat. And depending on whether she's thrown up before digesting… _could she possibly make this more difficult?_

He reins in his frustration because yes, she most certainly could.

But he hasn't seen her lightsaber, product of the most fascinating construction he's ever been privileged to witness. Say what he will about the Jedi, about their status as traitors, to have watched her build her weapon remains one of the great prides of his life. He may never stop owing her for that. As much as he can owe someone.

 _Katooni_. That's her name. Katooni, the Tholothian Padawan. Jedi child. Whatever she was. And now runaway, fugitive, payday.

Discomfort is _not_ what he should be feeling right now, or ever.

"Lost it," is all she offers when he asks, and the guarded look returns like blast doors slamming shut. Holding up his hands, he tries to wave off her fears. "I was just remembering the day you built it," he tells her. _Truth_. "Remembering the girl who found her confidence. Thanks of course to my generous encouragement."

A smile like a memory flits across her features. "Yeah, she did," Katooni whispers, pausing from her food. Then the suspicious lines break, her expression melting into anguish. No tears, but she quakes as a starship speeding into atmosphere.

Surprised to find himself at a bit of a loss for words, Hondo nods. Oddly enough, his sympathy is real. Or feels real. He's getting soft.

And then a few minutes later, when the somaprin _finally_ kicks in and the girl slumps in her chair, he actually allows himself to feel remorse.

For a second or two, anyway. Any longer and it might get in the way of business, and such an _expensive_ emotion…well it isn't worth the trouble. It's like he always says, you can't sell a heart of gold. Not his fault the girl trusted him. She _knew_ him!

He does feel bad, though. Chalk it up to the misplaced sentiment of old age. At this rate, next thing he knows he'll be naming one of his new ships in her honor.

But first, it's past time he reached out to Durnen. The Devaronian's done him service before and has good relations with the Black Sun, relations that Hondo himself…well.

He'd almost rather trust a Hutt.


	4. Chapter 4

She doesn't even feel betrayed.

Not what Katooni expected, given that she probably should, but then it's not like she didn't know who she was dealing with. If she'd just followed her gut she'd never have knocked on that stupid door, and she'd still be free. "Trust your instincts" went hand in hand with "trust the Force". How could she have forgotten?

 _Because the Force has been stealing your life from you piece by piece and giving nothing in return._

She squeezes her eyes shut.

But closing her eyes means watching Petro fall to blasterfire in the Temple, shot to pieces among the clones he's killed while defending a wounded Zatt. It means watching Byph succumb to respiratory disease after two weeks in Coruscant's sublevels, and watching Gungi run down by that Trandoshan gang. It means seeing Ganodi's too-thin body curled in her arms, the Rodian girl's saucer-like eyes cold and empty, the lightsaber slash from the unknown Dark Sider a wicked grin across her abdomen.

The floor it is, then.

She hears the door slide open. It's him, of course. There's no one else it could be, not here. He wouldn't allow any of his crew in, not with a bounty like _hers_. She doesn't know how much it is, but she's a Jedi, not a fool.

 _Yes you are_.

Katooni doesn't look up. The door hisses closed.

His frown hangs on the air. "Hmm, I confess I didn't expect you to give in so easily. This is very unsatisfying." He doesn't sound derisive or condescending, just curious. Conversational. "Ah, forgive me. I don't think I would have taken any pleasure from this under any circumstances."

Patterns scratched into the floor meander in front of her. A durasteel deck shouldn't move like that. Katooni's not sure if it's a side effect of whatever he used to knock her out or if she's starting to lose her mind. Or if she lost her mind back when Ganodi was murdered. Or any of the others times she watched a friend die.

She's definitely still feverish. She can feel it hiding in her brain, the pressured haze pushing between her scattered thoughts it its latest attempt to drive her mad for good. One huge meal isn't enough to recover from the shivers or the empty stomach that have been her only remaining companions.

 _Little does it know it's too late. I'm going to be dead soon._

 _A stupid fever can't_ know _anything, idiot._

"Sometimes business requires doing things one finds...distasteful. You should know, I mean it when I say: this is distasteful."

Undoubtedly. "Some comfort that is," Katooni mutters, stumbling through the words.

Hondo lets out a sigh, impatient and dry. "Believe me little one, I don't like that our relationship will end in such a manner. No one regrets this more than I - okay, you probably do, but truly, I wish this were otherwise."

Her fever haze allows her to view with detachment his self-righteous rambling and...she almost believes him. The quiet underneath his grave tone. The connection she'd felt with him years ago, the fact that he let her wolf down a week's worth of food before drugging her. It almost convinces her.

Energy bonds are more convincing.

A little hiccup that might be a laugh bubbles up from her chest. "Not enough to let me live."

Katooni doesn't need to look at him; she can practically _hear_ his mind leap from one reaction to the next. His mouth opening to give justifications that neither of them are remotely stupid enough to believe. The cold shrewdness that governs his business dealings straightening his spine, squaring his shoulders, lifting his chin and narrowing his eyes behind the goggles. Then the release, muscles loosening as that small part of him, the one that occasionally concerns itself with morality, acknowledges that he doesn't _entirely_ agree with what he's doing.

And finally the flourish of acceptance as his brain reconciles reservation with reward.

Hondo Ohnaka's personal one-man drama, for a captive audience of one.

She knows all this because while he helped them when he didn't have to, returned to pick up her friends and Ahsoka on Florrum to stop General Grievous from slaughtering them, that was all _before_. Before the clones marched on the Temple and tore her world apart three Jedi at a time. And even then...

Even then...

"No, little one. Not enough to let you live."

Anger. Katooni lifts her head for the first time. "Don't call me that."

Hondo's eyes widen. "But you are," he reminds her, as if the accuracy of the label were the point of her objection. "And do you know what that makes you worth? Nine hundred thousand credits!" He paces imperiously, hands clasped behind his back, earlier hesitation already forgotten. "Do you know - no, of course not, what am I thinking? That's more than enough to buy _quite_ a few freighters, well-outfitted and fast."

He swings around mid-stride. "If only you were older. Fourteen is still only a child, and seven hundred _thousand_ credits is a lot to lose..."

For some reason that wounds her as much as any of it. "Sixteen!" Katooni spits at him. "I'm _sixteen_..."

Her voice trails off. _And I won't see seventeen. I was just lucky, living long enough to watch everyone else die._

 _Guess the Force has a mean streak._

"Sixteen." His voice is quiet, almost kind, and that threatens to break her where his thoughtless commentary didn't. She twists away as much as the energy bonds allow, hoping he can't see just how fragile she is right now.

If he does see, and of course he must, he doesn't comment. He allows her that much, at least.


End file.
